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Through the Education Lens

The Dark Side of Our Achievement Culture

CJW, September 1, 2010 8:01 PM

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New "Race To Nowhere" Trailer Below
The Dark Side Of Our Achievement Culture

The Daily Riff featured the Vicki Abeles-produced provocative edu-documentary "Race To Nowhere" with a video clip focusing on the behind-the-scenes of Advanced Placement (AP) in our high schools.  With a newly-released trailer below, you'll see more of "the dark side of our achievement culture".  

Are we creating a culture of unprepared high achievers?  Is our education system inadvertently contributing to and even enhancing a student mind-set of superficial multi-tasking?

One cannot help but connect the dots from this film to reports about college campuses seeing more cases of mental illness, increased signs of depression in college including twice the incidence of of anxiety and ADHD drugs.

Does it start in Kindergarten where upcoming research is estimating over one million children are potentially misdiagnosed with ADHD, or is it reducing our children to the number of AP classes or a test score?

Perhaps it starts at age 3 when testing will begin in NYC for giftedness.  But no fear, "Wealth Matters".   Under this headline, it is reported how private tutoring is "booming" with parents  receiving real bargain pricing in this down economy of $85-$150 an hour, vs. a
tutor for $250-$400 an hour.   Indeed.


For related The Daily Riff articles:
The Chinese Curse:  Is America Next?
The Education Arms Race
Race To Nowhere




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